I will be back later, writing about Sarah Walker inspired me to me watch all of season one and then I thought why stop there. One and a half season to go.
Have fun.
Jul 172010
Sarah is one of my favorite characters on one of my favorite tv shows. Chuck is about a guy called Chuck who gets the Intersect, the combined knowledge of all American intelligence agencies downloaded into his mind. Sarah Walker from the CIA and John Casey from the NSA is assigned to protect him.
Sarah goes undercover as his fake girlfriend but eventually feelings starts to develop and they have an on off relationship that is one of the driving forces in the series. She is a real sharp kick-ass agent but underneath that she has a heart of gold.
Throughout the series they stand against secret organisations that wants the Intersect for their own. In the first two it is Fulcrum and in the third it is the Ring.
Sarah Walker is portrayed by Yvonne Strahovski, a beautiful and talented Australian actress.
Relationships
- Bryce Larkin, Chuck’s old roommate from Stanford. Partner with Sarah in the CIA and they had an affair then until he went rogue and sent the Intersect to Chuck and Sarah was assigned to protect him. They rekindle their relationship again when Bryce returns but in the end she chooses to stay with Chuck.
- Cole Barker is James Bond like agents that becomes one of Sarah’s love interest for a short period but they never go further than kissing
- Daniel Shaw is the new agent in charge in season three and at first he seems to have real progress with Sarah but then he discovers she killed his wife (she was set up) and defects to the Ring and tries to kill Sarah. Chuck shoots him to save Sarah but he survives to the end of season three’s cliffhanger.
Her Past
She was grew up with her father who was a con man and she participated in some of his cons as seen in some flashbacks. She had many aliases as she grew up but we know her real name is Sam which might be short for Samantha. Nothing is known about her mother and she might have a sister (but that could have been part of her cover story). She attended at least her last year of high school.
More pictures after the break
May 262010
There is a sadness with season finales, you say goodbye to friends that have entertained you with their company for a season and now they must go. Some friends go and newer come back, but the best friends keep returning with that special chemistry, that connection that makes them special, Chuck is special.
It is really amazing that one show have been able to collect so many attractive and likeable characters as Chuck. This season finale draw my attention to how much that means for a show to become great. Through the whole finale, the whole season and the whole series there is this family feeling that binds it all together. There is a family of Chuck, Ellie and Stephen but there is also the big extended family with Sarah, Awesome, Morgan and Casey. Their other family is the Buy More, not as close but still with an emotional bound, a cohesion that many, too many shows fail to achieve. For me that is very attractive.
What’s also great with Chuck is that it allows the characters to grow, to change and take on different roles. I for one think it was great that Ellie finally learned the truth about her brother. She must have been surprised and more than a little chocked when she saw Chuck down that CIA agent and Awesome by mistake revealed that Chuck was a spy. That paved the way for the great emotional scene when they sat down together and talked about it and she got Chuck to promise to get out after he dealt with Shaw and the Ring.
Morgan is a growing character, now that he has been in the loop for a few episodes, he thinks he is on top of it all. His partnership with Casey works great. Casey used to scare the shit out of him but now… it’s not really like they are friends, but they are family and they both care for Sarah and Chuck. Morgan and Awesome is another great entertaining surprise this season. Their relationship have also changed and when they go after the prison transport to liberate Sarah, Chuck and Casey in Casey’s car it is one of many really good scenes in this season finale.
Casey have become one of my favorite characters on TV, Adam Baldwin is a comic genius. His grunts, eyebrows and facial expressions have been a delight the whole season. Now when he has his daughter Alexis back in his life he added another dimension to his character. Him telling Alex I am your father (Star Wars anyone?) was a fantastic scene. She can fight too and the look on Casey’s face when he found out was priceless. Added potential for fun was when he found out Morgan carried Alexis number, that is going to be so fun next season.
It was a strong scene when Shaw shot Stephen to make Chuck emotional so he couldn’t fight back. The regeneration technique the Ring was developing at that base makes me wonder if he really is dead for real. But both Ellie and Chuck believes he is. One of the basic motivations for all the shenanigans that goes on in this show is to protect the ones you love. That’s what makes Ellie lie about her CIA contact. That is why Stephen disappeared from their life. That’s why Chuck never told Ellie about being a Spy. And I am sure that’s the reason they are going to lie next season too.
Chuck and Sarah works well as a pair now, lets not split them up again will you. Chuck discovering his father’s real job and Orion’s secret lair is great. Wonder if he will keep it a secret from Sarah too? That would be a great setup for all kinds of Mr and Mrs Smith action next season.
The season finale was great, the Ring leaders and Shaw arrested, Casey reunited with his daughter, Chuck and Sarah are out of the spy business (yeah, right), the Buy More destroyed and Jeffster on the run as primary suspects for that bombing. I hope we will see Big Mike, Lester and Jeff again even if Buy More might not return, wonder what kind of new cover the team will get then?
The search for Chuck’s mother will be a major plot for season four, I am sure. I wonder who she works for?
Have a nice Summer Chuck! We meet again in autumn.
This week’s episode of Chuck sees the return of his father. Elli thinks she works for CIA and that Casey is a bad guy out for her father but she has been duped by a Ring operative. Chuck had a dream about Shaw being alive and asks Morgan for help in finding Shaw.
Chuck still has dreams of Shaw being alive and turns to Morgan for help to keep it a secret from Sarah, but Morgan cannot resist Sarah’s interrogating techniques.
Meanwhile, after being contacted by Ellie, Chuck’s father Stephen shows up at the Buy More, not knowing about the Intersect 2.0 in Chuck’s head.
Worldbuilding
The seasons Ring arc is revealed. The Ring has built a new Intersect and the Ring agents have been trying to get some way to safely download it. Remember the episode where they fried the brains of subject after subject? They know that Stephen Bartowski has survived having Intersect 1.0 download and now they are after his solution.
Plot
The Ring is after Stephen and his invention. They use Ellie to get his location but Sarah and Chuck foils that attempt. After Sarah fells the last kidnapper with a well aimed kick Stephen asks Chuck.
Does she have the Intersect too? No Dad, that all her
Chuck asks Casey to protect Ellie and he follows her but comes to believe she is having an affair. Casey asks Morgan what he believes so Morgan does an interview with awesome and almost falls into love with him himself.
When Ellie returns home unexpected and discover Casey scouting out her place she wacks him on the head with a frying pan, twice and escapes with the ring operative.
We see agent Shaw downloads the Intersect in the closing scene. Is that version 3.0?
Characterization
This episodes theme is on lies, especially the ones of the Bartowski family. Part of the charm of the series is Chuck, Morgan and Awesome’s inability to lie convincingly. But here Ellie lies too and see where that takes her.
When they try to track Shaw Casey makes Sarah re tell everything she and Shaw did in Washington, to which Chuck mentally grinds his teeth. He is not the only one lying.
Big Mike reveal his past as Rain in Earth Wind Fire and Rain as he gives Lester his tacky scene outfit and tell him you have the hips of a six year old girl, use them. The whole Buy More subplot with Jeffster splitting was as always amusing and entertaining. Lester’s rant against the Man was memorable.
After they find Shaw’s spy will in his penthouse there is much talk about the dangers in their line of work. It is and endearing scene when Sarah gives Chuck her spy will.
My View
Chuck vs the Living Death was a great episode, fast paced, with big arc revelations, intense buildup for the finale next week and a very fun episode. There is much happening in it so I had to re watch it before writing this. If you are not watching Chuck you are missing out on some great TV.
Chuck’s two hour season finale is tonight, Chuck vs the Subway and Chuck vs the Ring Part II
Shaw returns to threaten everything that Chuck holds dear as his friends, family and the woman he loves are all put in mortal danger. Chuck has to find Shaw and stop him before his own world gets torn apart but with Chuck finding it increasingly difficult to flash, will he find Shaw in time or will the Intersect that has saved his life so many times in the past, finally be the thing that kills him?
May 132010
No one is pregnant, at least as far as we know (that was my lame guess why Anna was back). This week in Chuck I imagined all kinds of joy when Ellie and Awesome return unannounced. But the clever cleaning gnomes fixed their trashed apartment. Instead of flashing Chuck has these weird dreams every time he falls asleep, they eventually leads him to a psychiatrist and a fast forward to the CIA loony bin.
We all know Sarah has difficulties expressing her feelings, telling Chuck she loves him for example. It becomes clear how much it bother Chuck when he lays it out to Doctor Leo Dreyfus (guest star Christopher Lloyd) “we have a solid relationship” he starts with before it floods out of him in a true Chuck rant.
Morgan dressed in a tuxedo, walks like a god when he crosses the store on his way out to meet Chuck. Anna who is there to ‘catch up’ with him is flabbergasted, Morgan brushes her off because he is on a mission tho help Chuck prove a murder plot on an African president, this is just before Chuck is enrolled as an unwilling mental patient.
If you remember the back story Morgan was devastated when Anna broke it off with him. Now he is natural, as natural as Morgan can be, focusing on his ‘Bro’ and how to help him, this happens one more time, Morgan brushes Anna off again and in the end Anna realizes she wants him because she can’t have him and in one of the final scenes of this episode she tries to take him back, but Morgan realizes he doesn’t want her any more and decline. I felt it was a pity, because I like Anna, her character is interesting and bitchy, but it felt right for Morgan, well handled by the writers and the actors. Will we have a pining Anna in the Buy More now? Or is she going back to Hawaii?
Maybe we should talk about the main plot of this weeks episode? Chuck dreams, he foretell an assassination attempt by the Ring on a visiting African president at the concert the following night . He shouldn’t have woken everyone in the middle of the night to do it, Casey needs his beauty sleep. Instead of believing him a sleepy Beckett sends him to a CIA psychiatrist. Chuck and Morgan goes to the concert hall to prove he is right, dressed in the aforementioned tuxes. He falls asleep after an amusing little chat with Morgan about relationships accompanied by shushes from their fellow spectators. He dreams again the scientist beside the president is the killer, Chuck confronts him, flashes on the tooth as a fake containing Ring data and punches him so the tooth flies away. Sarah and Casey arrive in time to see him taken away by guards.
That’s when he ends up in the CIA mental hospital where spies end up when they can’t take it any more. It is quite a treat with all the quirky characters there. When The scientist shows up with two goons to find out how Chuck got the Intel, a patient who thinks himself Merlin tries to save the situation and yells “Spy Attack!”, and all the patients go totally Kung Fu and you believe its in the bag, the bad guys speed dart them with their trank guns.
Sarah and Casey believe in Chuck but analysis of the tooth proves it is 100 percent human and doesn’t contain any Ring info (that is because chuck picked the wrong tooth by the way). They all end up at the Doctor’s house in the middle of the night, when Sarah arrives Casey is already there. That was a good and emotional scene where Sarah for the first time says she loves Chuck. “Maybe you should tell him that” the doctor tells her before they leave for the hospital and saves the day.
The big arc of the rest of the season hits somewhat unexpected. Ellie works for the Ring! Justine (the ring operative/camp leader from Africa) cons Ellie into believing he is a CIA agent sent there to protect her father. He tells her that Casey is a bad man sent after her father. After she accidentally discovers Casey’s arsenal she have no trouble believing it. And after Awesome tells her it is crazy that she would believe something like that about Casey she also believe Justin telling her not to talk with anyone else about it, they would only tell her she is crazy. In the end Justine convince her to contact her dad.
In the end Sarah tells Chuck she loves him, just as he is about to tell her that he might have long term problems due to mental stress from the Intersect, so he doesn’t tell her. If we are to believe Chuck’d dreams Shaw is still alive. But Chuck doesn’t tell Sarah when he wakes up. When will they ever learn? It is amusing most of the time, the young two’s inability to communicate.
Did you notice the weird ‘hypnotic’ screens on every TV in Buy More? What’s with that? They had some obvious Rorschach pattern going on.
An even better episode this week, rumors says Chuck is renewed with an order for 13+9. It could be official any time now.
Next episode is 3.17 Chuck vs the Living Dead
After his last dream, Chuck asks Morgan to help him on a side mission. Their investigation becomes complicated when Stephen J. Bartowski returns and learns that Chuck downloaded the Intersect 2.0. Luckily, Chuck’s father may be able to help his son.
May 062010
Chuck is really heating up with them being a couple and Morgan joining the team. This week they brought a new intro, a 60s kind of homage to old school spy series with chuck driving in a red sports car, and Sarah driving in her black car, them looking at each other and then Morgan driving up in a scooter behind them. And then Morgan wakes up. Neat.
I almost forgot that Morgan is living with Chuck now, at least he doesn’t sleep in the nude any more, but I can understand Sarah’s reluctance to move in.
The spy business is back on track, Chuck and Sarah are assigned to a mission lead by a legendary CIA power team, Craig and Laura Turner, a married couple. At first Sarah and Chuck are happy they found their role models but they show themselves to be nothing of the sort. Remarried three times they are bitter and fight all the time, but charming in a way. Their mission is to steal a chip at a party, but they ‘botch’ it by starting a family shooting match drawing all the attention. Chuck and Sarah pick up the ball and decide to show them how it is done, not knowing the chip is guarded by a Bengali Tiger. That’s was quite amusing, Chuck not wanting to shoot it, because tigers are an endangered species.
Meanwhile Casey got his orders to train Morgan or they both would have to go back to boot camp. Casey is great, no one can do angry like he can. He and Morgan has an interesting report, and Morgans assignments are timely cut in between Sarah and Chuck’s. I thought they did it particularly well when they synced Morgan sneaking on Big Mike trying to steal the security card he had around his neck switching back an forth to Chuck sneaking up on the sleeping tiger to get the necklace with the chip. You know that Chuck is allergic to cats? now you do. His sneeze wakes the cat and they have to run for it. Why didn’t you shoot it? It almost ate me, he asks Sarah. Its an endangered species she answers calmly.
Mission accomplished they leave the party only to be relived of the chip at gunpoint by the Turners.
After being double crossed by the Turners, Chuck and Sarah wants revenge, so they track down them at their hotel and bag and tag them, bringing them home to Chuck? But instead of the US Marshals, the thug they stole the chip from is outside the door, with his tiger. There are some tense moments there before Morgan and Casey arrive. Confronted by the tiger Morgan does the brave thing and bait it into Ellie’s apartment and locks it inside. It totally wreck the place which is going to be interesting next week when Ellie will return home to much surprise.
I was afraid they wrote Mr and Mrs Awesome out of the rest of the season, but I am happy to discover they didn’t. We get to see them arrive in Africa in pouring rain, run into the wildlife and treat some patients before Awesome suddenly falls ill and they have to ship him back to the states for treatment. I thought that was nice by the writers to get them back that soon, but they are more wicked than that. To my surprise the camp boss picks out a Ring communication device and report ‘They don’t suspect anything’. He caused the sickness somehow, returning Ellie and Awesome, next week.
Could this be the start of the season arc? We will see next week. I can’t wait.
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